A Girl, A Lot of Free Time, and A Second Life

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Category Archives: island talk

A long time ago, way before we started dating, the whole Formspring thing was going around plurk. One of questions someone asked a bunch of us was “Who would you take with you if you were stuck on a deserted island?” Although we weren’t particularly close at the time, and definitely weren’t hanging out very much, Aldwyn said he would take me. 🙂

Tonight we got our new little mini beach set up. Looks like he’d still pick me.

The beach making didn’t go exactly how I intended it to. I wanted the beach to gently slope off of the side of our parcel, but well, without the terrain texture to blend it in, there was no gentle sloping. It just looked like prims. So I did the next best thing – I made it into a mini island and put a bridge leading to it. I think I like it better this way. It feels more private.

Tomorrow I’ll be working on putting trees and flowers down. I bought a forest building set but after putting some parts down, it’s just not what I wanted. It’s lovely and all, really is, but I think it’ll be better for the autumn and for when the house isn’t up on the hill. Right now I think big trees will look better and more balanced. Of course, I say that now and tomorrow when I start putting trees down, I might change my mind.

I think the thing that will get me after I put all the trees and stuff down is what ELSE to put on the sim. I mean, sure, I can just plunk down tons of trees, but I feel like we need some other little building and whatnot.

So after all the inspiration I got out at Neva River, I thought to myself, “Self, it’s time to finally get the parcel done.” Remember how I said I’d be doing that this weekend? Well… At around 8pm tonight, this was how it looked.

A mess and a half.

See, it was all going pretty well yesterday. I managed to move our house up without TOO many things ending up on different floors. Well, okay, the bed was in the living room and the living room couch was in the water, but WHATEVER. It all moved back fine. Then I managed to terraform it up AND use my path building kit from Studio Skye to make a path leading UP to the house. I was tickled pink! In fact, it was so awesome, I thought I’d leave well enough alone and do more today.

And that’s when all the crazy started to happen.

See, I want to make a tiny little beach because, you know, sometimes you want a little sand between your toes and Aldwyn used to live on a beachy sim and sometimes I wonder if he misses it. Studio Skye makes a beach kit. Perfect! Only I couldn’t quite figure out where I wanted the beach. I wanted it to be more of a “private” thing for us [private looking, not actually “don’t come here” or anything like that], but the place that would look the best for it? The corner where our house is! The more I thought about it, the more I wanted the little beach in THAT corner. So, I grabbed the whole house again, scooted it over to where it is in that picture, and set about terraforming the pathway AGAIN.

So I started working and putting the beach prims down. I really like them because they have waves! But because our whole sim is green, there’s not that fade into sand like I wanted. So off to the Studio Skye sim I went [AGAIN] to look and see how the little beach there was. OH. There’s ANOTHER set of beachy things I need!

But then something else came up and I needed to do some style blog pics for FaMESHed and I also need to buy more $Lindens to buy the other beachy things I need to finish the little beach so I can start working on the more foresty part of the parcel and then build my little river and put the pond back.

This landscaping stuff is no joke. I can see now why some people just hire others to do their sim for them.

I’m really exhausted now, and I keep feeling like I’m TRYING to get sick, which I don’t have time for, so I think I need to go to bed and see if I can sleep this off. Goodnight!

And before we knew it, the Grand Bluebonnet Mountains sunk back into the ocean until next winter and springtime hit the island.

I’m so excited!!! Now this is DEFINITELY not how our parcel is staying as far as landscaping goes, not at all, but it’ll do for the moment. I can’t wait to really get in there and start terraforming and making things look good!!

Our home has been really bland regarding landscaping over the past few months. Oh, I tried but summer is not my favorite time to do many things. Autumn, however… I just love decorating for it!! I’ve been getting dirt under my nails and putting people to work to get our home ready for the upcoming season.

This is the side opposite the small creek that runs by our house. Ulaa “Falled” up our wedding gazebo and twisted some autumn vines all over. The playground we’d had up at the camp site is back, and tucked into a corner is our new outdoor movie theater. I think it looks amazing!!

I think next we’ll just work a little more on our “backyard” and then it’ll be done!

I set up our own little movie area on Bluebonnet tonight. The Cheeky Pea & Pilot collab for Collabor88 was just screaming at me to be set up. Plus I got to finish watching Footloose, which I rented a few days ago to watch on our tv in our house.

I hadn’t planned on ever watching the remake of Footloose. I am a HUUUUUGE fan of the original. But I will say, as far as remakes go, this was pretty decent. They stuck fairly close to the original, even down to things that were said and songs that were used. I wouldn’t buy the movie for keeps, but this is a 7 day clearance rental from Lightening Video, so it only cost me $199L. 80 cents worth of entertainment? Sure!

So last night was a little sad for me because two of my friends decided to move off the island. I have been expecting it because now that they’re together in RL, that is obviously their focus, as it should be. But I honestly adore my renters, and losing any of them is hard for me! But, Ulaa decided she wanted the spot since her first parcel is usually completely full with all her builds. So now she can build on one parcel and live on the other. And it saves me from having to find someone else, although within 10 minutes of posting on plurk that I had a spot, I had people asking about it. That’s always a good feeling!

Mmm…I guess it’s time for more terraforming since my slavedriver of a husband keeps asking me about it. :-p

Movie night with the Oleanders tonight! Brownie points if you can guess the movie. 🙂

I couldn’t wait any longer, so our autumn grass came a day early to Bluebonnet. As much as I think beaches are nice, I just wasn’t feeling the whole summer beachy vibe this year. Even doing a “Martha’s Vineyard” style beach this year wasn’t what I wanted really. I’m so much happier with the grass, especially the darker grasses we use for the autumn. Once our new house is prepared, I can really get to work on the parcel and see how well my ideas work with my skill level.

Maybe one of you will know the answer to this, as I’m still pretty uneducated about the whole pathfinding thingy in Second Life. I’ve chosen to turn it off for now on the island, simply because I don’t really know WHAT it does and because I don’t really think that we need it. But whenever I terraform, it starts to tell me that I need to rebake the region. What exactly is rebaking doing? And why do I need to do it when I terraform? It’s not the same thing as saving the terrain file, I know that much. I wish someone would just put out a very easy to understand page on the whole pathfinding thing.

Ugh, long day again today. If you’re on my plurk, you know about it. If you’re not, to make a long story short, my parents’ little dog [my puppysister!] had to be rushed into surgery for pyometra yesterday. It just tore my parents up because besides me, that dog is their world. We never had indoor dogs when I was growing up, so we didn’t know that not having a female dog spayed could be really bad down the road. She’s an indoor dog, never around any other dogs at all, much less male ones, so it was one of those things we simply didn’t know had to be done. She’s 7 years old, and it’s common in older dogs, although it can happen in little ones too. So let this be a lesson to you all! Like Bob Barker always said, get your pets spayed and neutered!! The little one is back home now and I spent the day over there with them. She just did not like this day. At all. My poor baby puppysister. 😦

Oh. And I’m pretty much always going to be 12 years old because in my reading about the problem, I still snickered at “Treatment requires the bitch to have the uterus removed.” Yeah, bitch! Get that uterus out!

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So while I’m waiting for Ulaa to get her new computer and build a new house that I just have to have, I’m thinking about what to do with the rest of the parcel.

My original thought was to have like a little farm or a vegetable garden. But I dunno now. Now I’m thinking more of a park setting. And yes, that is our wedding gazebo still back there. I finally moved it but I just cannot pack it away! I just love it!

I have a feeling that I won’t feel comfortable setting up the rest of the parcel until I have a new house. And yes, I could TOTALLY just use another house, but I like hers best in terms of quality and style. So I’ll wait.